Thousands of heart patients who suffer from severe left ventricular heart failure could benefit from cardiac transplantation. However, because of a shortage of donor hearts, most of these patients face a shortened life span characterized by frequent hospitalizations, severe physical disability, and death from congestive failure or cardiogenic shock.
One medical device developed to aid these heart patients is a heart pump such as a left ventricular assist device (“LVAD”) which enables heart failure patients to return to prolonged and productive lives. Most heart pumps or cyclic delivery systems are physically large and complex and make implantation difficult or impossible for some patients. Even when the heart pumps can be implanted, the surgical implant procedure is highly invasive.
Conventional implant procedures use median sternotomy, and in some cases, thoracotomy to insert the heart pumps or LVADs in a patients' body. A median sternotomy is a lengthwise incision through the breastbone (or sternum) that is made when heart surgery or other invasive surgery in the chest cavity is performed. Similarly, a thoracotomy is a surgical procedure for opening the chest wall in order to access the lungs, esophagus, trachea, aorta, heart and diaphragm. Depending on the disease location, thoracotomy may be done on the right or left chest. Pump implants via sternotomy or thoracotomy are highly invasive procedures which are complex, expensive and require relatively long patient recovery time.
Accordingly, there is a need for a less invasive surgical heart pump implant procedure which is simple, less expensive and minimizes patient recovery time. The use of such an implant procedure has become possible due to the development of a specially shaped inflow cannula and a LVAD that has a small displaced volume.